SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I was lied to for the entirety of our 30 year marriage.

So much TT

I saw a text accidentally. It was a total fluke that I saw it. I wish he would have confessed, but my WH was much too conflict avoidant for that.

In my opinion, there’s no use wondering about that. All of it sucks. It’s all devastating and rocks the betrayed spouse’s world. Infidelity is awful. The best thing a cheater can do in the aftermath is not trickle truth.

My wh confessed after he found out he was going to be arrested and before it was going to be published in the newspaper the following day. The threat of having everyone you know find out your husband slept with a prostitute doesn't help the situation to put it mildly. I wish with all of my heart he had confessed without the threat of publicity - I do think it would make it easier to trust him now.

On the plus side there was no trickle truth - I had all of the important details on dday.

We were in a bad way he had detached and I sensed it but I had no idea why. He wasnt sleeping, he had a stress rash, he was angry irritable unhappy generally. He crossed the line a couple of times and really disliked how he treated me. Of course it was in a defensive attacking say just trying to push me back. I was reaching a point of giving up and had offered separation. He didnt want that. So he was still stuck in his own mess. He actually bonded and "made love" that night assured me he loved me and touched me physically and emotionally in a way that had been missing and I thought oh ok this might be alright afterall he couldve strung out the affair a bit longer then or he couldve ended it and returned to the marriage me oblivious.... but during the heightened arguing he had said would it be easier if there was someone else then you could hate me? I was knocked side ways and said if course not, how would someone else ever make anything easier? I think that was his first realisation I had no clue and the fall out that was about to happen. I think he was ready to confess then but my reaction of disbelief and to dismiss it stopped him.

2 days later I asked why he was withdrawing again and probed why he said that and he messaged right back because there was someone else. He was shell shocked I barely got more than a few words out of him that day I just shut down assumed he was leaving and that I didn't want him anyway told everyone and blew the whole thing up getting our house ready to sell etc. I honestly dont think he expected ground zero.

If he had no intention to tell me then I think I'd have struggled to ever trust him again. He was sloppy with the A I couldve found out any time. But I trusted him. I was looking for other problems not this. And he couldve tried to call her off and mend us and not tell me. But he said he knew I deserved to know so coming clean was the only option. He had been given the option to ride off with her name and reputation intact me unaware and he didnt want that either. So this was the only way forward. It was tiny glimpse of the shattered integrity he had. But it bloody took him a long time to find it and alot of self sacrifice like his confidence, peace of mind and happiness being eroded. But I'm glad as hes a selfish person and had he not suffered personally I'm not sure he wouldve arrived at remorse himself he wouldve stayed in the skewed denial perspective. If he had made me go detective lied and denied I'm not sure I couldve come back from that. I went detective after dday but rarely found much he hadnt volunteered or that even mattered.

But then I never thought I'd come back from any of this so who really knows what the outcome wouldve been. But at the hardest of times ive held onto the fact he confessed of his own accord it was the ONLY redeeming point at the lowest point of R without it I'm not sure I would've reconciled

there are people here who have walked in on the/an act. I was one of them. I've never told my story on here nor am I going to.

But I have to believe it was one of the worst ways to find out. I developed PTSD and had to have EMDR to recover.

I think most posters here agree that all infidelity hurts, but a cheater who voluntarily confesses somehow feels "less wayward" than one who is caught. Further, it has been my observation that cheaters who voluntarily confess are less likely to minimize, TT, and/or DARVO.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 4:29 PM, October 22nd (Tuesday)]

This has been on my mind for sometime actually.

I think an affair is a huge high at the beginning and then it wanes in excitement, until it’s lost it’s appeal and the cost/benefit analysis sets in and they play damage control.

I suspect that where the WS is in the affair is more a predictor for their reaction to being found out, their willingness to ‘work’ and whether they tell or not.

So nothing is set, I don’t feel anyone can think they’re safer because they were told by their WS or less safe because they didn’t.

All cheaters chose to betray the one that loved them most. Often repeatedly. The only thing that matters is the work they put in after to bettering themselves.

My H came home and told me. Downplayed it like “yeah I met someone and I might have feelings”. Two weeks later he wants a D and then it’s trickle truth, false reconciliation and DDay2.

So much for his honesty.

I wish it were true that a confession equates to no TT. I ended my A and disclosed it voluntarily, which I always thought was a mark in my favor. I told myself that "at least I was honest." The real truth was that I minimized from the first sentence out of my mouth. I told BH what I convinced myself were the "worst parts" (intercourse and ILYs) and used that to justify omitting all kinds of terrible details.

Was it better for my BH that he at least knew about the A, instead of being totally blindsided when the TT started on D-Day 2? I guess so. He was aware that I cheated before he decided to marry me, but I still lied, manipulated, and deprived him of his agency in making life changing decisions. Learning that was utterly horrific, no matter what I had already confessed.

We took 14 people on a cruise to celebrate our 20th anniversary. Big event! After the cruise ended 7 people including myself were driving home in a minivan taking 2 days. Since my husband had to get back to work he flew home.

As soon as he got home he called me and said he was exhausted and was going to bed. That was really odd...it was 6:30pm and in 20 years of marriage he had never done that.

I had just set up cameras in my house because I wanted to check in with the dog sitters and see if they were really coming and taking care of the dogs. So I jump on the cameras and I hear the dings of texting back and forth...weird...why and who? Then I watch him change his clothes. WHAT?

I was driving so I didn't know what to think. When I got to the hotel around midnight I went through the cameras throughly and saw that he was lying. I called him at 2am and I asked him what he had done. He hung up. I called him back and to my surprise he answered, "I was with the woman you hate...Lisa." I told him fine in a calm voice. Couldn't believe that we had just celebrated our 20th anniversary. My nightmare had just started. I told him to be moved out by the time I got home. He did.

When I got home I discovered he had my computer, makeup and other things I had put into his suitcase. Yes, all replaceable but easier if I just got them from him. He returned to the house. I took his keys (it was a struggle and I won) because he was going to hear me out. After about 4 hours of screaming at him he grabbed my hand. He stayed and we have been working on R.

Did it matter that I discovered he was talking with her by seeing it on the cameras. No. But I had wished I had caught it earlier.

BTW, he thought I knew about the texting by looking at his phone record online. Heck no, I had no idea how. He confessed because he thought I was going to call her if he didn't tell me. Now at DDay I only knew of a dinner.....wow the avalanche came in the following days.

A "unforced disclosure" is best case (in a horrible situation).

I would agree with this. I think this would have been the best way for me (if there’s such a thing!) of finding out and setting out on the path to recovery and reconciliation. I had a suspicion for a few weeks, was told that there was nothing going on at all and he swore on our child’s life that he had never cheated on me. Then found a message on his phone which he hadn’t had a chance to delete yet. He did his best to deny the extent of it all for days but it was painfully clear what was going on. TT. Finally found out that he was having an affair (and it had already started when I first confronted him and he swore on our sons life). The second time round he (seemed to) confess much faster. Immediately in fact, once I found the evidence. Thinking about it makes me wonder whether I’m crazy contemplating reconciliation. I wish he had told me proactively. I just don’t know how to trust him again.

This question gets asked here often.

YES, it does matter. WS and FWS that confess don't seem to be the norm, but if you are a WS, or FWS reading that haven't disclosed yet, you should know how your BS finds out does matter to their healing and to being able to achieve R together, if that's the goal.

It has been known a long time that anything a person experiences through surprise gets stored differently (and more likely to be permanently) in their long term memory. As I'm sure you can imagine, any 'surprise' memories that become quickly stored in a BS' long term memory become quite problematic if you want to R.

If the BS has no idea their WS/FWS is cheating, disclosure will obviously be a surprise, but there are degrees of surprise. Prepping someone that some bad news is coming (the old "Are you sitting down?", before giving someone bad news), gives the BS a signal that bad news is coming.

She showed up with a strange cell phone, hers had quit and she borrowed one from her supervisor that I had had some suspicions about before.

I started snooping, keylogged her computer, obtained passwords, then found a CD with all of her AP's on it, (they were comparing).

Turns out the cell phone thing was legitimate after all. Ain't that a hoot.

a cheater who voluntarily confesses somehow feels "less wayward" than one who is caught.

The reason is that the WS is already started on the path of remorse, not regret.

My WW lied to me until I caught her each time. I believed her minimizing until 1 night a month after she "Stopped going out like that" told me about one of the nights. I defended her, then 3 other friends confirmed it.

Yeah, I was seeing red.

What's important is that the WS both realizes she's effed up and commits to the truth. R requires both.

Sometimes both conditions are met when an A is discovered by snooping. Sometimes one of the conditions is not met when the WS confesses.

As always with infidelity, it's essential to consider the specific case. On d-day, we're faced with our WS. We have to deal with our own WS in our own particular circumstance.

Statistics and probability - which are unknown anyway - don't matter. Attempting to predict motives from behavior described on an anonymous Internet forum? Probably a futile endeavor....

JMO, of course.

I think it would have been easier to R if my husband had stopped the A on his own and confessed. At least I would have had proof that he was honest with me (at the risk of losing me) and would want to stay with me.

Instead I caught on by total fluke, had to send the OW an email to back off because he sure as heck didn't want to give her up and I sure as heck didn't want this person in my life or my husband's. Then I had to play Sherlock Holmes to see what had happened and to see how far things went with OW because, like everybody else, I have my limits and some stuff I knew I would not forgive. And all along I was thinking (after finding out about the A) that my husband was probably just waiting for OW to leave her husband so he could take off with her, which would have been terrible since I am an ex pat (my family is a 10 hours flight away), I just had put my entire pension fund in our account which meant he and OW could have half (my pension fund was my flat in England), I had little kids, could not afford the mortgage for this house and if he was going to give me the minimum child support allowed by the state ... I would eat potatoes for a long time.

Basically, had he confessed and the A would have been done, it would have been a case of "what the fuck happened here?". Instead it was "what the fuck is happening?" which brought me immense trauma and ptsd.

In the end I divorced my husband. I had no idea if he wanted to be with me or not so to resolve this small dilemma I divorced him and posted it on Facebook so OW (in case she would creep) knew her OM was available. He was free to be with OW again or with whoever, while I would know the answer and my back was safe.

Well the dude never moved out, my brain is healing from the trauma and getting new connections. Which means the world is not a scary place anymore, but a world of possibilities again. I guess we passed the "what the fuck happened here?" one day without even realising it and we are rebuilding ourselves. Btw... we are 6 years out, and it feels like everything happened 5 minutes ago.

A year ago my WH of 46 years confessed to a single ONS that occurred 35 years earlier. He was angry that night and I could see by the look on his face he knew and meant for this to hurt me. I was shocked and devastated, but also felt compassion for him carrying such an awful secret and shame all these years. I rubbed his leg and told him it would be hard, but if he wanted to, I wanted to try to work through this with him. He swore it only happened once, hadn't happened before and never happened again.

You can probably see where this is going.

After a month of talking, crying, and questions, questions, questions, he broke down and told me of his other many betrayals. Turns out the man I loved was a self absorbed serial cheater whose betrayals and deceptions started in year two of our marriage. Only after he came clean about all that his delusional thinking started to clear and he saw himself and his actions for what they were.

As far as the circumstances of learning about the affairs - the extra month before I knew the truth in its entirety allowed us to spring into emergency mode and provided evidence we both wanted to work hard through this and stay together.

I hate his dishonesty and cowardliness in coming clean but would have been completely overwhelmed by the enormity of his transactions had he dumped everything on me at once. We are talking about 45 years of lies. His decision to TT was yet another bad decision of many, but allowed for the hope of reconciliation and better times ahead.

It's all so complicated and all so hard.

When we tried to reconcile I told him I was glad he willingly told me the truth - after being triggered by a message to me by his OW, you may argue what's so willing in that but I thought then he could have denied. I said it mattered cause if I found out a different way we would never have reconciled. But he did it again and this time I discovered the lies and separated. I guess it mattered because there was hope for honesty and accountability. However, regardless of how you discovered it what matters most is how they try to fix themselves and help you recover afterwards.

I wish it were true that a confession equates to no TT. I ended my A and disclosed it voluntarily, which I always thought was a mark in my favor. I told myself that "at least I was honest." The real truth was that I minimized from the first sentence out of my mouth. I told BH what I convinced myself were the "worst parts" (intercourse and ILYs) and used that to justify omitting all kinds of terrible details.

I’ve tried to explain this to my wife. I know she still lies to me. Just this morning she trickletruthed me.... again.

She just doesn’t have it in her to be totally honest. I asked why not tell me this detail when I flat out asked you? She said she didn’t want to hurt me. Doesn’t understand that the continued lying hurts much more. I know she’s lying to me about a ton of stuff. She doesn’t understand that it’s going to come out one way or another. She swears on everything that she is being transparent in one breath and lies the next. Her ability to lie is breathtaking. Then she tells me stuff like you won’t ever believe I’m not lying even though you have the truth, followed immediately by another lie. She thinks I’m stupid, treats me like I’m stupid. Minimizes constantly, doesn’t even realize she is doing it. Just comes natural to her.

Just this morning she trickletruthed me.... again.

and what are her consequences for this? Where are YOUR boundaries?